MindmasterZero

On the boards? Storm. Its cold's retarded brother, scattering nice AE ready clumps all over. Sure, there's people who will always say you just need to know how to use it, position, corners, etc. But outside of City of Theory, it seems no one is ever willing to do that to get the to hit debuff in hurricane, damage in tornado etc without making a mess. Add in that to hit debuffs are grossly inferior to defense buffs against AV's, and given equal player skill, I'll take a cold over a storm. I'd rather have a mediocre cold player than a skilled storm player. A mediocre storm player is at best a draw, and a poor storm player is someone Id rather see just go afk. I know, every poster on these boards is the most amazing stormer ever (at least in their own opinion). Generally, I'd rather you be amazing with a different powerset.

In game? Debuffs in general once you get a good steamroll going. People don't understand how AV's resist them on top of the "purple patch" effect, and buffs last for multiple spawns. There's been a lot of talk in this thread about regen debuff, but that AV is going to resist 85% of that. A single sonic blast will typically yield more bang for your buck on a team.

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QUESTION: How will you be looking at merits for story arcs with PUG teams.

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Can anyone explain to me how this is different than the current setup with the reward window and the arc bonus XP only going to the mission owner? This is what they made shared missions for. (now, some aspects of sharing mission completion don't work as well as they could, I'll grant you...)

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Becase arcs give a minor amount of additional exp and a So currently. Not enough to waste your time worrying over. People WILL care about merits. Can you imagine trying to run a PUG task force where only the mission holder got the merits at the end? Its the same boat.

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Poster: Paradox1
Q: The Story Arc merit system seems to encourage us to solo non-TF missions, as running other people's story arcs earns 0 merits (unless we happen to have the same arc open). Is this really the way you want to encourage us to play the game?

A: While only offering Merits upon story arc completion to the owner of the story arc is consistent with our original reward system (only the mission owner earns the bonus story arc XP and gets to choose the SO enhancement) we understand that there is certainly room for improvement upon this. We will evaluate our options on how we can improve the rewards for party members along for the ride on a story arc.

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The EXP gain was fairly minimal, and the SO reward was insignificant. No one really cared about those things, so it was a non-issue. I think many will agree that people value merits more than a SO. This WILL be an issue on live. Builds that are better at soloing will simply grind their own arcs. Team forming will be more difficult now than ever. PLEASE reconsider this.


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Poster: Tempest_56
Q: How much a reduction are we going to see in future changes to merit awards, given that it's been shown that speed-runs of all the rewarding content can be (and will be) run? See: the 25 minute ITF. What failsafes are in place should the rewards for all available content drop to ridiculously low levels, thereby effectively locking out those of us who don't do TF speed runs four-plus times a day?

A: We’re aware that there are Task Forces out there that can be completed far faster than they were intended. There will always be groups of players who will maximize their rewards for the amount of time they invest. Any increases or reductions to merits granted will only be done along with ample data supporting this decision. Let me give an example: Currently we show an average completion time of the Positron’s taskforce of 235 minutes. If we saw this average completion time, not the fastest times mind you, drop to say 120 or 90 minutes, then we’d look into how this is being done. What we could do mission side to fix this, and consider toning down merit rewards if necessary. On the up side, if we see a task that simply isn’t giving enough rewards for the time required, we’ll bump that up.

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Positron in particular is noted as a boring grindfest. If people are running it faster, why is this a problem? Are we to never stealth missions? Should everything be a kill all grind fest? IMO, if you beat a few groups on a map, you've proven you can beat them all. Less forced time sinks on already long tasks.

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Power Build Up + Short Circuit ... end drain all the sudden becomes a magoe issue in PvE ... granted I did level my Kin/Elec but I also levelled my Elec/Elec Blaster the stacking end drain is an excellent damage mitigator


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Taht's great, except Power Buildup is not in the electric blast set. When you pick electric blast as your secondary, it doesnt automatically reset your primary to kinetics. Electric blast has problems, your fortunate pairing just hides its shortcomings.


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Power Build Up (or Power Boost, one of the two) is available to Defenders as an Epic Power Pool. And any Defender with Electric can pick it up OR Power Sink which drains a full mob and gives you back all your endurance. I see no issue here.

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So picking a weak secondary forces you to pick another power from a different set to actually use it? Gotcha. No balance issues there!

I'm fine with end drain being hard to pull off. What I disagree with is elec's damage being penalized because of it.

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Hard to pull off? No. You can drain a whole mob with just Two Short Circuit blasts, no other powers needed. The epics just let you do it INSTANTLY.

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Base recharge of 20 seconds, long activation time. Most spawns are dead by the time you can pull it off twice on a team, and those that arent die soon after, resulting in a very small benefit actually gained from end drain.

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Power Build Up + Short Circuit ... end drain all the sudden becomes a magoe issue in PvE ... granted I did level my Kin/Elec but I also levelled my Elec/Elec Blaster the stacking end drain is an excellent damage mitigator


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Taht's great, except Power Buildup is not in the electric blast set. When you pick electric blast as your secondary, it doesnt automatically reset your primary to kinetics. Electric blast has problems, your fortunate pairing just hides its shortcomings.


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Power Build Up (or Power Boost, one of the two) is available to Defenders as an Epic Power Pool. And any Defender with Electric can pick it up OR Power Sink which drains a full mob and gives you back all your endurance. I see no issue here.

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So picking a weak secondary forces you to pick another power from a different set to actually use it? Gotcha. No balance issues there!

I'm fine with end drain being hard to pull off. What I disagree with is elec's damage being penalized because of it.

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Power Build Up + Short Circuit ... end drain all the sudden becomes a magoe issue in PvE ... granted I did level my Kin/Elec but I also levelled my Elec/Elec Blaster the stacking end drain is an excellent damage mitigator


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Taht's great, except Power Buildup is not in the electric blast set. When you pick electric blast as your secondary, it doesnt automatically reset your primary to kinetics. Electric blast has problems, your fortunate pairing just hides its shortcomings.

Similarly, energy aura's issues should not be addressed by forcing them to take stone melee for mitigation, and martial art's low damage shouldnt be "fixed" by having them take fire as a secondary to add extra damabge.

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The second issue about Sonic's self-protection was already on the list I started working from. Again, if anyone else feels that Sonic Resonance does better than this issue suggests, I'll move it under a debatable header. I do have a Sonic Defender, and I know that in the lower levels, even with Sonic Dispersion, there wasn't much I could do to increase my survivability besides keep attacking. With my Forcefielder, I had Force Bolt and Personal Forcefield for when things went bad. I wouldn't have a problem with something like adding another effect to Sonic Siphon (KD, KB, Slow, Stun, etc.) for those times when there's one too many enemies than you can handle.

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I also have a 50 sonic/sonic. Throughout most of the character's career, the degree of self protection is likely the lowest on any character I have played (at least from my primary), and the only character I felt was a chore to solo with in the teens and twenties, and that was with taking aid self.

Compared to force fields, sonic dispersion offers a lower % mitigation than the equivalent, which also offers protection from end drain.

Additionally, PVE wise, resist is generally worse than defense, as more attacks hit. While they do less damage, any secondary effect (slow, to hit debuff, defense debuff, etc) lands for full effect. If sonic's resistance offered resistance to debuffs it would be less problematic, but it doesnt (as far as I was able to test). I'm not even sure if the shields offer resistance to damage resistance debuff.

Sonic also has a glaring hole to psi, which force fields do not. Its not a huge issue, but if issue 13 does involve a shadow shard revamp, wisps are one group a sonic defender is more or less useless against. Lastly, force field gets protection from sleep in the form of raw defense, something sonic does not.

I think the sonic primary could use a small boost. If sonic siphon was changed to actually SIPHON resists and grant the user (or even the team) a 10% resist all buff or something, I dont think it would be overpowered.

"Thank you COH fans... but our princess is in another castle!"

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just read the last 29 pages of people crying about the latest vet rewards. ARE YOU SERIOUS PEOPLE. i think the devs shouldnt give anymore out. people are never happy, if u do not like the game-------LEAVE. the devs do a good job keeping the game fresh, in fact sometimes i think they do to much to try and please everyone, sometimes less is better. in fact, im totally amazed on how rude some people are, they must be hillary supporters

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We shouldnt voice our displeasure with the implementation? Thats the entire POINT of these feedback threads.

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I still think they can be made a bit stronger without worry of PVP exploits ( because you know that's what castle is worried about).

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Everything in this game is about balance (or at least tries to be).
If they made these pets less fragile in any way they would likely reduce the buffs they provide too.

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Either the buffs are overpowered to be practically on all the time for a back row character, or they arent overpowered to be on all the time for a front row character.

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Actually if I had to guess the "exploitable" nature Castle is talking about is the fact that these buffs are apparently team oriented. An unkillable team buff would be pretty powerful, obviously too powerful as far as the Devs are concerned. It'd almost be like a Vet based variant of a zero END cost Leadership pool power.

Once again balance is key.
My bet is if they made these pets unkillable they'd make the buffs NON-team oriented at the very least.

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Once again... either its OK for all AT's to have it, or its not OK for some to have it. Right now, its actually imbalanced.

Lower the % and make them perma if PVE is an issue. Ban them from PVP zones if PVP is the concern. Right now they seem like a hassle for some to get the benefit, and a freebie for others.

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I still think they can be made a bit stronger without worry of PVP exploits ( because you know that's what castle is worried about).

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Everything in this game is about balance (or at least tries to be).
If they made these pets less fragile in any way they would likely reduce the buffs they provide too.

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Either the buffs are overpowered to be practically on all the time for a back row character, or they arent overpowered to be on all the time for a front row character.

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As for why they are so fragile, let's just say if they were at all "tough" I could exploit them horrendously. So, they are fragile. They CAN be kept alive if you are a ranged AT, but melee tpes will have a hard time of it.

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This is good design how? Why the favoritism?

Moreover, if they were unkillable like the cosmetic pets,m how would they be exploitable?

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I mean damn, 10 hp -75% resistance, its a clear slap in the face. With all the AoE heavy enemies end game, whats the use of this pet. Can the pet itself be buffed?? I've also heard rumors it can only be used 3 times.

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Vet Awards, once again, have always followed the "nice-to-have" not "must have" paradigm.

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You've yet to provide how its acceptable to have it "nice to have" for some AT's, and pretty useless for others.

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Not my job to explain the rationale the Devs had for this.
Maybe you should ask them.

But if I had to speculate this pet will help everyone in different ways. Obviously the buffs are more useful to ranged squishies than melee tank-types. But then again that means it actually helps the people who need those buffs more than people who don't really need defensive help so on that level I still don't have a major problem with this.

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If the pets didnt buff damage, I might buy that. As it stands... blasters need offensive help?

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If you don't like it (which you clearly don't) tell the Devs about your displeasure.

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Hence the comments in the thread. What I REALLY dont want is to ever hear a request to bubble the damned things lol.

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I mean damn, 10 hp -75% resistance, its a clear slap in the face. With all the AoE heavy enemies end game, whats the use of this pet. Can the pet itself be buffed?? I've also heard rumors it can only be used 3 times.

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Vet Awards, once again, have always followed the "nice-to-have" not "must have" paradigm.

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You've yet to provide how its acceptable to have it "nice to have" for some AT's, and pretty useless for others.

Even if it was unkillable, I fail to see how its breaking the game. Either the buff is overpowered, or its not. It shouldnt be any more overpowered for a tank's pet to exist perma than a back row blaster's. Its more a QoL issue than anything else, not recasting the thing after every battle.

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You do realize how potentially overpowered these buffs would be if they -are- team buffs right?
Certainly possible of course, but to think that all Dev documentation is error free is naive at best.

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You got to wait 48 months for these AND these have 5-10 hp

Not that over powered and I can't wait to get mine!!

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Yep you're right these pets only have 10 HPs AND have a -75% Resistance penalty.

But do you realize how easy it is for a level 50 ranged/sniping Blaster to play for literally hours without taking ANY damage? If I can play the game keeping a squishy completely damage free it'll be relatively easy to keep a pet like this providing TEAM BUFFS alive constantly.

Certainly these pets won't be overpowered in every situation or team.
But for people who know how to work it we'll certainly exploit it to its limits.

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And what benefit do they provide a tank or scrapper? It seems kind of unfair that certain AT's get to make use of the pet while others dont.

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People in this thread have already offered creative ideas for using these pets to absorb alpha strikes. Sure that means melee types might not get the buff advantages from these pets often, but they will gain benefits of their own.

Besides the ATs which already have superior defenses don't really need -more- buffs for that anyway.

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My fire tank would beg to differ. Some additional defense would be quite welcome.

I also fail to see how a pet with such a tiny summon range would be useful as an alpha absorber. Realistically, it IS crap for a tank, as the things going to get hit with the AE's the tank is directing towards himself.

I say make the things unkillable, to let everyone get equal use out of them for their intended purpose.

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You do realize how potentially overpowered these buffs would be if they -are- team buffs right?
Certainly possible of course, but to think that all Dev documentation is error free is naive at best.

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You got to wait 48 months for these AND these have 5-10 hp

Not that over powered and I can't wait to get mine!!

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Yep you're right these pets only have 10 HPs AND have a -75% Resistance penalty.

But do you realize how easy it is for a level 50 ranged/sniping Blaster to play for literally hours without taking ANY damage? If I can play the game keeping a squishy completely damage free it'll be relatively easy to keep a pet like this providing TEAM BUFFS alive constantly.

Certainly these pets won't be overpowered in every situation or team.
But for people who know how to work it we'll certainly exploit it to its limits.

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And what benefit do they provide a tank or scrapper? It seems kind of unfair that certain AT's get to make use of the pet while others dont.

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With 10 hp they sound about as useful as the current pets that do nothing.

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They certainly will do nothing for tanks and most melee, since they'll follow and get creamed by splash damage.

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It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't required to do all six long and boring TF's to get an accolade I need.

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I think Synapse and Numina are hella fun.

But I agree some TF's need to be shortened now, or made easier...in order of priority Quarterfield, Positron, Psyche

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Synapse - "Check out three warehouses". Lets try 1.

Numina could cut some of the pointless zone hunts. At least change Faultline's to Arachnos instead of Vaz, since it sucks to stand around with your thumb up your butt waiting for grey mobs to spawn at night...

Also, have TF contacts give their phone numbers from the start. This stuff is supposed to be important. I'm fairly sure they can burn some anytime minutes.

Hopefully this will start a real discussion on what sucks about task forces.

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- Decrease the number of Pool C recipe drops. Taking out the less desired recipes and putting them in another pool would increase the number of desired recipes and stabalize the market. The cost of some recipes are getting out of hand, and are already unreachable to the casual player. This change will only worsen that.

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This is something that should be done anyway. The TF recipe way pool is too large.

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I'm also wondering why theres 2 snipe sets in it at 50. At least make executioner's contract stop at 40, so you arent twice as likely to get a garbage snipe recipe as any other set.

Is there any way some of the TF's with 8 minimum requirements could possibly be changed to, say, 6 players?